“This vision tumbled over Phoebe with the force of revelation: she would stand somewhere and look back, she would live a life.”

“And Phoebe saw, with a dreadful clarity, that in the end she'd failed to interest her mother enough, failed to hold her attention. Some flaw within herself made her extraneous to everyone. She stopped on a corner overwhelmed by a terrible pain. It was her fault, her own fault. She'd done everything wrong.Wait, she thought, but wait - walking again, faster now - maybe she'd misunderstood, maybe the deal with her mother had been that they each would live a secret life and not tell the other, but Phoebe hadn't realized - she'd failed to live the secret life and now her life was only this, a hundred empty years stretched uselessly behind her.”

“Something was wrong. She'd failed, Phoebe thought, but at what? Imagining herself in Europe, she'd always pictured someone else, physically even, a tall blonde with an answer for everything - as if, in the course of this journey, she would not only shed her former life but cease to exist as herself. Yes, she thought, to leave Phoebe O'Connor behind and be reborn as someone beautiful, mysterious. But the opposite had happened; her own narrow boundaries had hemmed her in, keeping everything real at a distance.”

“They must have looked like traveling companions, Phoebe thought, possibly even a couple. She noticed her voice leaning into laughter, how she tossed her head, each tiny gesture like the sweet ache of a muscle craving exercise.”

“At night, the house thick with sleep, she would peer out her bedroom window at the trees and sky and feel the presence of a mystery. Some possibility that included her--separate from her present life and without its limitations. A secret. Riding in the car with her father, she would look out at other cars full of people she'd never seen, any one of whom she might someday meet and love, and would feel the world holding her making its secret plans.”

“Phoebe burst into tears. For several minutes she stood weeping in the middle of the road, the choking, gulping sobs of childhood. Something was wrong; something was wrong but she didn't know what. She was alone in the middle of nowhere, behaving strangely, with no one around to help her, and what people were around she wanted only to escape.”

“Sometimes I imagine myself looking back on right now and I think like where will I be standing when I look back Will right now look like the beginning of a great life or... or what”